


to be burnt alive by a man’s hand

by isoldewas



Category: Black Sails
Genre: F/M, IF I LOVE YOU IS THAT A FACT OR A WEAPON, M/M, Threesome, Vane has a type, Vanerackham, women as plot devices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:54:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28364985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isoldewas/pseuds/isoldewas
Summary: The girl is a blond, the girl is a substitute.
Relationships: "Calico" Jack Rackham/Charles Vane, "Calico" Jack Rackham/Charles Vane/Original Female Character
Comments: 7
Kudos: 32





	to be burnt alive by a man’s hand

**Author's Note:**

> even i have a crush on charles now, guess i played myself

_The things we say are_  
_true; it is our crooked_  
_aim, our choices_  
_turn them criminal._

Margaret Atwood

Jack looks up from his cup. Charles is looming over him, a question already between them. A woman already on the stairs, staring them both down.

 _You’re a thief,_ Jack thinks.

His hand still clasped around his cup, he follows Charles to a room on the second floor of the brothel. It feels as if there’s still a choice to be made here, even as Jack walks in. Even as he closes the door.

The girl stands at the dead center of the room, her expression flat and uninterested. With practiced ease, Vane pulls his shirt off. 

Jack puts down his wine. 

There are no mirrors here, yet he would like to see the scene reflected back to him. He would want to know how he looks, leaning against the closed door, arms crossed. Whether the uneasy feeling in him reads as anything. Jack brings a hand to his neck, hot and sweating in the stifling summer air. He tries to undo his scarf, but his fingers won’t bend, his whole body’s gone rigid. 

Vane nods to the girl from where he’s standing right near the bed. Her hands replace Jack’s, and all he can do is stand there, as she undoes his scarf, as it falls to the floor. She presses a hand to Jack’s chest, and it sends sparks down his spine. The girl is quick about it, her jaw set in a way that commands obedience, and Charles must have noticed that about her.

A smile tugs at the corners of Jack’s mouth, easy and unbidden. Vane has a type.

Vane is right there, watching, his eyes set on Jack, on the woman’s hands. He can feel them catching at the soft skin of his stomach, both her hands and Charles's eyes. The room feels smaller than it is.

The girl pulls his shirt off him and steps back. She turns to do the same to Charles, and Jack counts the steps it takes her to reach Vane. It’s nothing, it’s five.

Her hands land flat on the man’s neck but they don’t stay there. She’s a thing in perpetual motion, her arms moving up and down, fingers tracing the muscle on Charles's arms. His collarbones, his jaw. Her hand reaches lower, mapping out his chest, his stomach. Thighs. 

Jack stares. His skin burns and his world shrinks down to the hot room and to her hands. To the skin underneath. Her hand between Charles's legs, she moans, a small performance that shouldn’t cost her anything. The sound settles deep in Jack’s gut. 

The woman plants a hand against Vane’s chest and pushes him to the bed. When Vane grunts, quick and low, Jack’s skin begins to crawl.

The girl pulls at her skirts, and they come apart in her hands: the sleeves and the gown and the belt, all different parts, falling around her like shed skin. Her knees on either side of him, Vane’s hands go to her hips, keeping her there, his grip tight, his mouth hungry. When she tilts her head, her hair falls down her back like gold, like sunlight. 

There’s nothing subtle about it now. The girl is a blond, the girl is a substitute. 

Charles rolls onto her, pins her under his weight, and— There are things Jack knew before. He knew the strength of Charles's hands, the smell of his sweat, and the look he gave when you went against his orders. Now, he knows what Charles's face looks like when on the brink of something.

He can’t unsee it. The violence of a man and what it turns to when it doesn’t have an outcome.

Vane’s hands are still gripping her hips. Jack’s hands are far, far away from them. He doesn’t know what to do with it: his hands or the pair, with any of it. Jack watches long fingers tighten on the gold expanse of skin. He wishes for his shirt back, just so he could keep himself busy. Just so he could look at something other than Charles, who presses a hand between the woman’s legs. Who starts fumbling with his belt.

Vane stands up to step out of his clothes, never glancing at Jack behind him. The woman pushes herself up, brings herself closer to the edge of the bed. 

Eyes catching at the golden skin, Jack stands there, dumbstruck. He can’t tear his eyes away from the man’s back, the muscle there, the curve of his ass. It’s the easy way he puts himself on display: with Jack in the room, Charles still goes through with it. 

Jack steps closer, and Vane catches it.

Terror settles between Jack’s shoulder blades, fast and heavy. He thinks, if he can hold his gaze long enough he’ll be safe. He’s unable to see beyond the beads of sweat on the man’s neck. The girl is supposed to distract Charles from the hungry look in Jack’s eyes, from his trembling hands and his open mouth, yet here they are. 

Jack tries to school his face into a semblance of ease. 

“You want to watch?”

The woman’s voice is impossibly loud. With just a sentence, she makes some sort of shift known to all. As Jack stands there in absolute silence, he doesn’t dare breathe. His throat feels very dry, the air scorching hot. She has broken something here and nobody wants to pick it up. 

“Leave him,” Charles's mouth moves with brutal precision.

Even in this, Vane holds on to his violence, keeps his voice low and unfeeling, so that it cuts you before it touches you. 

Yet the woman doesn’t give in to his spell. She talks and she moans, empty words, dirty words, and she keeps at it as Charles grabs at her hips and pulls them higher, to where he’s standing, one knee on the edge of the bed. He starts to move inside her, and her words land in sync with the pace of Charles's hips. _Do you want to see. Do you want to know. Do you want to know what it feels like, what it would look like, him—_ Charles's hand comes up to her chest, forceful and bruising. She winces. She pulls at his hair, and she talks about how good he will make her, how she will be soft and open after. But all Jack hears is _him._

This isn’t supposed to happen. He can’t just keep at it, watching Charles's hips at work. He wonders whether Charles will stay at his side, while he— It doesn’t feel like he’s waiting for his turn. 

The woman is right there: skin and sweat and the knowledge that if Jack were to touch her, it won’t just be her hands or his. All of it would collapse on whatever’s Charles doing right now. Worse. It would be too much and too close, not enough time in between to separate them, for it to be anything but this: the woman is a proxy.

Jack steps closer. _Do you want to know what he feels like._

The floors creak beneath his feet, and the sound ricochets around the room. Charles's eyes snap to Jack again.

What he must look like. Jack closes his mouth, his eyes, tries to school his expression into boredom or excitement, into anything that won’t get him murdered right then and there. He knows exactly what’s on his face. He’d punch him. 

There’s no telling whether the next thing out of the man's mouth will be an insult or a threat. Jack braces for both, for neither. He would take Charles's anger as he would take anything from him.

Jack opens his eyes, only to check how close his face is to Charles's fists. But there’s nothing there. There’s nothing in Charles that screams murder. There’s nothing that’s even surprised.

“Come here,” he offers instead.

From Charles, Jack knows how to take an order, how to push back against a demand. He doesn’t know what to make of this: not the softness in the man’s voice, nor the desperate edge in Charles's grip on the woman’s hip. Nor the image behind Jack’s eyelids: that hand, on his hip. In a terrible terrible way, he wants Vane not to give him a choice. _Don’t be decent, don’t start now._

Jack does move, makes half a step before Charles catches his wrist, before he takes Jack’s hand and presses it to his hip. 

Jack could have guessed that the flesh there is all muscle. That it would be warm and solid beneath his fingertips, that his mouth would go dry. Without putting a name to it, Jack has been guessing at the feel of a man’s skin against his, and only now does it strike him for what it is. How this longing always had a shape. 

Charles moves his hips, just once, yet Jack’s hand on his hip falls away instantly. 

Just like that, it would be so easy to dismiss. Jack has excuses ready in this mouth: to Charles and the crew, to Anne, who would know a lie before it starts. To the girl, the girl who has seen their hands. 

Maybe Charles catches her watching. Maybe he knows it too: the things in this room stick to the skin. The things in this room bury themselves at the root of you. Charles flips the girl on her stomach.

Jack watches the blond head push into the mattress, a hand splayed across her shoulder blades. She reaches behind with one hand, positioning Vane against her. What makes it all happen, is her. If pressed, Jack would be able to deliver a convincing narrative. The shine of her hair, the glistering skin, her empty stare turned dark when Charles slides into her, her cut-off sob when he pushes or bites into her shoulder. When his fingers curl around her hip.

So what if Jack won’t remember the girl’s face. So what if he knows nothing except for Charles's hands, his chest and his shoulders, the curve of his ass and the cut of his hips.

When Jack looks up, Charles's eyes are set hard on his. He watches Charles pull his hand off the woman’s hip. He watches as it settles low on Jack’s ribs, palm flat against his skin. 

It doesn’t burn him down. Instead, it reads as an offering. _This is what I could do to you._

Jack could’ve said no. Before, he could have said no, could have raised his voice and implied his outrage. Yet here, now, Vane’s fingers light on his ribcage, his question finally strikes Jack as finite. He could never have agreed to _this;_ he could never have guessed. 

Even to himself, even like this, he couldn’t have admitted that this would have the force to split him open. Or that he’d let it. In this moment, Jack would trade anything, anything except for Anne, to be burnt alive by a man’s hand.

Jack sees it reach lower. There’s a sound in the back of his throat, terrible and loud and he pushes it down before Charles's fingers curl around his cock. Like everything about Charles, it’s careless and quick and it’s turning him to ash in the small room. His skin crawls. Charles's hand is hot around him, and when he looks down he knows by heart the cut of the silver rings, the bracelets on a twisting wrist, the scars on the fingers wrapped around the length of him. Jack wonders how a man justifies his hands to himself.

There’s a heat to that, and it’s not just the man, it’s not just the air. There’s a point where Jack ceases to stand, where there’s nothing left that’s not touching Charles. Whatever else there is to him doesn’t belong anywhere, and he can’t tell if it’s a blessing that at this moment he doesn’t exist beyond Charles. 

In that moment, in that light, Charles is a god. And gods shouldn’t want thieves.

His body’s quick. Jack catches himself reaching out. He does not know how to explain his sure, if embarrassed, hands. Only that one longing covers itself up with another. If he touches, if he satisfies that particular hunger, maybe it’ll spill over to the raw and terrible thing in him that wants for it to be a given.

He swears, to himself and under his breath, that he can’t feel his hands. But they move, they get to the skin, to the jut of muscle Charles's leg meets the hip, where his cock disappears inside the woman. He’s still moving at a pace, too close, entirely too close to Jack. This is no longer something that exists solely in the confined space of Jack’s mind, where even he can’t trust it. Here, if Charles only looks, he’ll find it. 

Maybe Vane’d be kind about it, maybe he won’t notice. Maybe, if Jack plays his hand right, he’d be able to survive this unscathed. Why should it matter that he wanted this? Charles never asked.

And Jack’s trying to steady himself now, his hand clutching around Charles's arm as if he were to stop him, to ask— Yet what would Jack of him? There’s nothing here that could be put into words. If he has words, they’ll spill out of him, they would want to make themselves known, and what would he do with them out in the open? 

To hand him the knowledge, would be like handing a knife. The words are a blade, however you twist it, it’ll set itself deep between his ribs. If Charles were to know it, he wouldn’t have to wield it. The damage would be done.

Jack has chosen a wrong mouth to expect soft words. It will never bend into shape. 

He can’t trust the hunger in Vane’s touches, the low rumble of his voice, the words he chooses to speak. “That’s good,” and “there,” and even “Jack;” it could all as easily be a lie. Smaller, even: it could all be nothing.

It’s much easier then, to accept whatever Vane’s willing to give up in this room. What does it matter, if Jack can’t refuse him. Not his hands or his words, not his mouth that bites, or his fingers that claw, or the sounds that break from him. His fast temper and his wide shoulders under Jack’s palms. His wonderful arms. His mean mouth.

What does it matter if Jack kisses him, his hands around the man’s neck, his own mouth biting and cruel when Charles moans into the kiss. He kisses him like he knows Jack can’t breathe, like that is something he has accounted for. 

Jack tears himself away, his own hand coming up to Charles's cheek, a gesture that looks almost obscene on his person. He quickly moves on, brings his thumb to Charles's half-open mouth, and pushes. Charles bites down, teeth catching at the nail, a biting sound that ricochets around the room. His body stays perfectly still for a moment as if caught unaware by this display of his own desire. And the girl must know, if not for the noise than for the simple reason that she’s not a fool, she’s here. 

“Look at my hand, Jack.” 

The man’s voice’s the same as it’s always been, yet for once it can’t command Jack into action. He finds himself hard and unmoving against a tide, unable to separate his excitement from the empty feeling inside. Something that spreads like fire and tastes like ash.

He knows grief. He doesn’t know it like this: with heat and sweat, with gold and skin and teeth; he doesn’t know what he’s grieving for. He doesn’t know what to do with this want when it’s being satisfied.

Instead of looking at Charles, he catches the woman turn her head. She locks eyes with Jack, her expression carefully blank. He reconsiders her. Jack thinks, after this, he would be able to tell her apart. She’d do the same to him.

His thighs are shaking. Charles drags his hand down, bites his lip. He leans in. “Did you want my hands on you?”

He doesn’t know what Charles expects him to do with that. Vane tears his hand away from his skin, places it back onto the woman’s hip.

“Or did you expect me to—”

Jack does not miss the change of verb, the implication that comes with it. That he had planned for this.

_Thief._

The word isn’t new, yet it strikes Jack like a blow to the stomach. What is being taken here. What Charles's been stealing away.

When Jack touches him again, he aims to bring a thing into life. But for all his cleverness, for all his want, Charles won’t let it. All of this is only happening because he allows for it. He takes and he takes and these are the things Jack will be left with, after. The look on Charles, almost soft, indisputably pleased, and the fact that this would have all meant nothing.

However this thing between them existed in Vane before, it can now belong to a time and a place. It could be measured and understood and dealt with. It could be reduced to nothing.

It is only happening so it doesn’t have to happen again. 

Jack wishes he were a better man. Deadly and ruthless, not unlike Anne. Someone who would fight Vane on this, who would stand a chance against his violence. The words are ready in his mouth. _Look at me._ But Charles is looking. He must realize.

Jack buries them in his throat. He’s not Anne. He’s not Charles. There’s nothing here to be won with teeth and blood, nothing to defend himself against.

Instead, he finds himself unrelenting. If this is all he gets for his trouble, then this is what he’ll have. The way his hands touch, you wouldn’t know how much it costs him. His fingers are steady as they explore the expanse of skin before him, the muscle rippling underneath. 

He runs his hand down Charles's chest, a pantomime of what he did to Jack.

He feels on the very edge of himself. His hands are guessing, eager and clever. Yet at the same time, he is plagued by the knowledge, that, if allowed, he’d give up more here. He tries desperately to find an end to it. His head goes wild with the image of Vane on his knees, his hungry eyes and biting hands. The line of his mouth, first sure then open, swallowing around Jack’s— He closes his mouth, he shifts on his feet. 

_I don’t want it._

_Take it from me,_ he pleads with himself.

Vane grabs at his arm. He locks eyes with Jack. He places Jack’s hand on the low of his back, twisting his wrist, burning him down.

_Make use of me._

He wonders how a person could survive it, setting the others on fire and not getting burnt. How Charles could exist beyond that.

“Jack?”

He digs his fingers into the curve of Charles's ass. For all his talk just moments before, the man doesn’t say anything else to make it easier on Jack. Like this is where he’ll draw a line.

And as he knew it the last time, he knows it quicker this time. _This is what I could do to you._

“Please.”

His eyes dart to the edge of Charles's mouth. The word seems foreign on him. It’s nothing to be trusted, just like his eagerness or his gentle hands, it’s something to be taken when offered and given away when asked.

Jack breathes in through his teeth, unsure of his hands. Like seeing things in the wrong order, he watches them reach lower. He slides his finger in. He does to Charles what he has asked Anne to do to him.

Charles keeps making noise, lets out these terrible vicious gasps as Jack’s fingers sink further. 

Jack can feel himself grinning wide, uncaring for how it reads, how it ruins. Vane smiles back at him, and if Jack didn’t know how a heart breaks inside a chest, then he can know it now. 

His other hand between his own legs, he matches the speed and force of his fingers inside Charles, to the way Charles moves inside the woman.

It’s not long then, before it overwhelms. Jack comes not long before Charles, and through the haze, he hears the girl make a noise like she does too. He thinks it kind on her part, to play along with this.

Charles plants his hands on the bed, catching himself before falling down on the bed, next to the girl.

She leaves the room as soon as Charles's hands are no longer on her. As she picks up her skirts, as she ties them around herself, she keeps looking to Jack. As he could have predicted the silence in the room is unbearable. When she closes the door behind her, Charles is still lying on the bed. 

It could be easy now. They fought, they drank, they shared. No meaning to it. Jack would only have to shrug it off and leave it there.

He fumbles for his trousers on the floor. He picks up his shirt and wipes his fingers.

Except that he knows what Charles's hand feels like around him, what his teeth sound like catching on a nail. He knows that this could happen. Did happen. He wonders whether it’ll last a lifetime, whether when he will be screaming his loyalty, it’ll pass between them, unsaid and unwanted.

He finds he can’t give it a rest. There are words in him that could break his life and Anne’s. They claw at his throat, they’ll have Charles punching out his teeth. And yet he has them.

Charles moves to get up. His eyes land on Jack, and suddenly the air in the room has weight. Jack tugs at his trousers, loose around his hips. 

It’s the way Vane looks, it’s the way he won’t look at Jack. That means something. Yet a day later Jack will find himself giddy and delirious and unsure. And how will he ever convince himself otherwise? How should he remember Vane, closing in on himself, uneasy and sharp, getting closer to the door as if to run away from this room? It won’t feel real, Jack won’t know it for the truth. 

“Co— Could you tell me why?” The words feel stale in his mouth. He tries for matter-of-fact, has to scale it back. He sounds like he’s pleading.

Vane gets to the heap of his own clothes on the floor. He slides a hand through his hair, he puts on his shirt. He gives Jack nothing else. 

Other words break free from his throat, unchecked. Jack says _please._

It shouldn’t matter. Vane said it before. Charles whined for his fingers, it shouldn’t matter now that Jack wants more of it. 

“Please?” Charles throws back at him. Takes his own words and turns them criminal.

He was foolish to think the words could make it true. This will still be nothing. This too will dissipate. Maybe if Jack had shown his hand before, he’d’ve gotten his answer. But this is the price to be paid for pretense. _You’re a thief and a murderer, and so am I._

Vane comes up to the door, leans his back on it while dressing. 

“What was it for?” Jack tries again. He tilts his head in question, his eyes following the movement of the man’s hands.

They still on his belt. Now, Vane’s eyes keep away. 

“Thought you’d appreciate it,” he says.

Jack grins. Immediate and unguarded, the words tear away from him. “You’ve thought of me?” 

_Don’t push your luck,_ and _fuck you,_ and _you cunt,_ all of it he would have known how to counter. Instead, Charles's face goes slack. The sharp edges of him seem to smooth themselves over and without them, without the threat of cutting himself open, Jack finds he does not know. He does not know what to do with that softness. 

Charles makes a small noise, like the start of something. It sounds so close to a laugh. 

Jack wants to know what comes of things like this, when they are allowed to have a future.

**Author's Note:**

> in the words of nanette "i just left 'em there"


End file.
